Simon & Garfunkel

Simon & Garfunkel, for Americans, rival plenty of the clichés Italians hold, and Walter Veltroni, well aware of this and always a fervent admirer of the duo, thought it wise to push for turning the Fori Imperiali into an incredible mass gathering, reaching and surpassing the already excellent results achieved in 2003 with the Paul McCartney concert. Too tempting a pretext to pass up, one that revives the glory of a past era when American showbiz was simple and direct, as well as sincere, popular and loved the world over.

Rome showed up in full makeup for the occasion, flaunting a Colosseum often lit up in blue and flanked, over its missing shoulder, by an evocative, nearly full moon: everything was perfect, right down to the forward-thinking setup of 5 giant screens scattered along the endless route. The metro ran until 2am, the Colosseo stop was closed for obvious, concrete and potential logistical reasons, and street vendors and shopkeepers were in full swing, keeping up the town's festive air.

Around 9pm, those same screens dropped the advertising logos and finally began broadcasting live footage of the movements on stage, until, dressed like two ordinary passers-by, the honest faces of the two celebrated folksingers appeared.

After a grotesque "Buonasera" shouted by Art with a child's euphoria, Paul's guitar strikes up the two chords that introduce the whispered "Old Friends", a song that sums up in a few minutes the homespun nature of their artistic stance, its faint vocal lines skirting patches of rural ground, underscoring musically a conversation between old friends. From the same album, "Bookends", they also draw "At The Zoo", "America" and the absolute classic already featured in Mike Nichols's "The Graduate", "Mrs Robinson", whose opening riff Simon plays with his legs apart and knees bent, almost hinting at an unusual (for them) rock-star swagger: all while scenes from the film with Dustin Hoffman roll by, filling the air with the kind of emotion that leaves a lump in your throat.

My overall impression pushes me to say, perhaps cruelly, that these days Garfunkel's timbre is starting to rival a squawk, especially when he ventures into those historic upper octaves, while Paul Simon's voice seems to have improved, coming across even sweeter and gentler, better suited than ever to his reverent compositions. That impression is confirmed when the duo strikes up "The Boxer" for the first encore, in a slowed-down performance the crowd struggles to keep pace with during the "la la la" of the chorus, yet made heavenly by the guitarist's voice.

There was no shortage of the other songs that made them famous, such as "The Sound Of Silence", performed with no departures from the original, "El Condor Pasa", "Cecilia", gorgeous and catchy, and "Sleep Slidin' Away", perhaps the finest moment of the evening. Also striking was their approach to more complex, epic pieces like "Bridge Over Troubled Water", sung this time, with nothing to complain about, by Art alone, "Keep The Customer Satisfied" and "American Tune". The backing band was also good, rarely intrusive and diplomatically placed at the service of melodies that were never overwrought.

Worth remembering was the appearance of the Everly Brothers, who turned up almost at the start of the concert and played, in sequence, "Wake Up Little Susie", "Dream" and "Let It Be Me", while the other two quietly laughed to themselves at how a band that had greatly influenced them back in the '60s now found itself "begging" for an appearance.

All in all, an evening suited to anyone who holds memories as their creed, well deserving of the 600,000 people who turned out for an obligatory, carefree dive into the past, happy to hum along, without pretension, to songs that have always been in the air. A pleasant, romantic occasion.

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